US healthcare markets have shared nationality and race data with ad tech giants

Nearly all of the 20 U.S. government-run health insurance marketplaces shared resident application information with advertising and technology giants, including Google, LinkedIn, Meta and Snap, according to a new Bloomberg investigation.

The report highlights privacy issues created by pixel-sized trackers, which allow website owners to collect information about their visitors, often for web analytics and error identification. These trackers are a common tool in digital advertising, and also allow personal information to be collected if misconfigured and placed on websites containing sensitive content, such as healthcare data.

According to Bloomberg, the New York health insurer shared information with several technology companies about a person’s application, including whether they provided details about whether they have incarcerated family members.

The Washington, D.C., health insurance exchange also asked residents about a person’s gender and race, something TikTok’s pixel tracker attempted to refine. The newspaper reported that some races were convincing and others were not. A Washington, D.C., stock exchange spokesperson told Bloomberg that residents’ email address, phone number and state IDs were also shared with TikTok.

Washington, D.C., temporarily halted the rollout of a TikTok tracker, and Virginia removed a Meta tracker from its website after Bloomberg found it was sharing residents’ ZIP codes with the tech giant.

This is not a new problem, and has previously plagued telehealth startups and healthcare giants alike. Several companies and healthcare giants were forced to notify millions that they were inadvertently collecting their health information and sharing it with tech giants, whose profits are derived from using consumer data for advertising.

But Bloomberg’s investigations show that these pixel trackers can affect large swaths of the population when placed on government websites. The publication noted that more than seven million Americans purchased health insurance this year through the state health insurance exchange.